


The Perks of Being a Rich Kid

by breeeliss



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Conversations outside of detention, Gen, Gen Fic, Hints of a Chloé redemption, Rating bc of Alix's mouth and literally nothing else, Rich kid bonding, dialogue-heavy, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 03:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12761742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breeeliss/pseuds/breeeliss
Summary: “I kinda wanna run over your face about ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent of the time you’re oddly entertaining. Like if I needed a good laugh, all I’d have to do is insult your contour.”“My contour is immaculate!”“See?”--Chloé and Alix bond after getting sent to the principal's office.





	The Perks of Being a Rich Kid

**Author's Note:**

> commission for leoqueen082 on tumblr :)

Useful bit of information that Chloé learned today: there was a limit to how much trouble her last name was capable of getting her out of.

Which, seriously, how ridiculous was that? What was the sense of being the daughter of the most powerful man in Paris if she wasn’t going to be totally immune to punishment? She tried to explain that to her teacher but he didn’t seem to appreciate it very much because here Chloé was, getting sent to the principal’s office with a bag full of extra credit homework that was going to take her hours to do.

Sabrina really picked a horrible day to be home sick with the flu. Chloé had been doing her nails during history class this entire quarter and now she had to write a whole _paper_ by Thursday.

To be fair, Chloé kinda toed the line a little close today. Not that she’d ever admit that to anyone other than her father who was going to _love_ an explanation for the mess she’d gotten herself into. That was going to be a fun conversation. She wasn’t sure if her justifiable hatred for Marinette Dupain-Cheng was going to be enough to let her off the hook, and that was the real travesty of the day. Because seriously, this was all Marinette’s fault.

But whatever. At least Chloé got her revenge. Definitely worth potentially losing her credit card privileges over.

M. Damocles was busy scolding a student in his office while another three sat right outside the door awaiting their own lectures. Chloé snorted when she realized that one of them was Alix who was crouched over her handheld and growling at the video game she was playing while she waited. Well, that explained why she wasn’t in class last period.

It was funny that people complained so much about Chloé (almost) never getting in trouble because of who her father was. Alix got sent to the principal’s office at least four times a week and only ever left with a slap on the wrist because of who _her_ father was.

Figures. M. Kubdel gave a monster of a donation to the school last year.

Chloé laid her jacket down on the floor and sat down next to Alix. “You know he’s going to confiscate that when he comes back out here, right?”

“Eh, I’m already up shit creek as it is, can’t possibly get any worse.” She waited until she was finished passing the level she was on before she looked up. “The more interesting story is the fall from grace you must have suffered to be sitting out here with us.”

Chloé rolled her eyes. “Don’t rub it in.”

“I can’t believe that the one time Chloé Bourgeois gets sent to the principal’s office, I miss it. Talk about shit luck. What’d you do? Curse out Mme. Mendeleiev because the lab goggles messed up your foundation?”

“Would you let that go?” Chloé glared. “And no, that’s not why I’m here.”

“Yikes,” Alix laughed. “Who’d you kill?”

“No one. It was a brief altercation.”

“Brief my ass. You wouldn’t be here if it was brief. Spill.”

Chloé shifted. “I...may...have gotten into a fight with Marinette.”

“Yeah, dude, that happens like every five seconds.”

“No like an _actual_ fight. Like I might have lunged over the desk and yanked at her pigtails.”

Alix’s head snapped back as she cackled loud enough for it to echo all the way down the hallway. “No you did not!! You catty maniac!!”

“She called me a soulless hag!” Chloé defended. “How was I not going to put my hands on her?”

“You need a therapist,” Alix suggested. “Like I’m talking thousands of euros in anger therapy. You’re a liability.”

“Screw you. What are you here for?”

Alix shrugged. “Rollerblading in the courtyard. Kim dared me. Couldn’t say no.”

“You mean you did it because you knew you wouldn’t get in trouble for it.”

Alix pointed in Chloé’s face. “Hey, Damocles is afraid of my father because he needs to keep the donations coming. You _make_ him afraid of yours. Don’t lump me together with you.”

“Please, just admit it,” Chloé smirked. “You’re a rich kid with perks.”

“Of course I’m a rich kid with perks. You, on the other hand, are a rich, annoying, prissy, spoiled kid with perks. And guess who everyone hates?”

Chloé gasped. “No one _hates_ me!”

Alix stared at her for a long moment. “Dude….do not start with me right now.”

“They don’t!” Chloé insisted. “They just….they’re jealous. Because I’m famous and Daddy gets me whatever I want.”

“God, I’m gonna vomit. Here, open your bag so that I don’t get it on the floor.”

“Gross!! Stop it!! You’re such a freak!!”

“You sat down and started talking to this freak so joke’s on you, my dude.”

Chloé pursed her lips. “Force of habit. Don’t read into it. Besides, what’s your excuse?”

Alix squinted her eyes and tilted her head. “It’s weird because you’re like ridiculously annoying and I kinda wanna run over your face about ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent of the time you’re oddly entertaining. Like if I needed a good laugh, all I’d have to do is insult your contour.”

“My contour is immaculate!”

“See?”

“Shut up.”

Alix stuck out her tongue. “I will say: the level of shade you dish out during all those benefit parties we hate going to sustains me.”

Chloé smirked. Their fathers had been friends for years —  long before M. Bourgeois got into politics and M. Kubdel became an art curator. That meant that every art exhibition, campaign fundraiser, charity gala, and Christmas party that either man decided to hold, you could bet that Chloé and Alix were both going to be there suffering through the entire thing with no one but each other for company. Alix told her that the momentary truce was worth listening to Chloé roast all the pathetically dull boys that always asked Chloé to dance, and Chloé had to admit that watching Alix threaten to scoop out old men’s eyeballs with a melon baller was quite satisfying.

“Daddy forces me to go to those parties because he wants me to be nice to the sons of all the politicians he tries to cozy up to,” Chloé shrugged. “Not that I don’t want to see him reelected, but I only have so much patience.”

Alix shrugged. “I think my mom just wants to see me in a dress for once. Everytime I shop in the boy’s section she has an aneurism. It’s great.”

Chloé nudged her. “Remember that time you panicked and invited me over to your house because you had to get ready for our New Years’ party and you had no idea how to do your makeup?”

“Um,” Alix glared, “the whole point of that momentary lapse of judgement was that we were _never_ supposed to talk about it. Like ever. To no one.”

“Who doesn’t know how to put on mascara? I learned that when I was ten.”

“Not everyone sleeps with a Lancôme palette under their pillow, _Chloé_. But anyway. I had a point I was arriving at before you distracted me.”

“The anticipation is killing me.”

Alix ignored her sarcasm and waved her in closer so that the other students in the hallway wouldn’t hear them. “I have to ask because sometimes I think your stupidity is genuine and not you pretending to avoid conversations that bother you. You... _do_ know that no one in class likes you, right?”

Chloé straightened her shoulders. “That’s not true. Adrien and Sabrina like me.”

“Sabrina doesn’t count, she’ll shine your shoes if it meant getting on your good side. And Adrien likes you because that kid’s got too much faith in the world and thinks you’re gonna do a huge turn around any day now. Everyone else low key wants to smash your face through a window everytime you so much as open your mouth.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

Alix lifted her hands. “Listen, I’m being honest with you. And I’m only telling you this because I happen to know that you’re not a total brat.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when we go to those parties? You’re like...not awful. You’re kinda tolerable to be around. I think it’s because there you’re not trying to impress anybody and here you’re forcing everyone to kiss the ground you walk on because you value your school reputation over all else. You try too hard and you come off as a total pain in the ass. It’s starting to seriously piss everyone off.”

Chloé blinked. That was a disturbingly thoughtful answer, especially coming from Alix. “Since when are people pissed off at me?”

Alix’s face fell. “Are you seriously that clueless?”

“If people were so mad about my behavior, they’d tell me,” Chloé reasoned. “Marinette’s the only one who hates me as far as I can tell.”

“That’s because Marinette’s a badass who isn’t afraid to say what everyone else is thinking,” Alix pointed out. “They just don’t want to say it themselves.”

“Why wouldn’t they want to say it?”

Alix rubbed her hands down her face and groaned, slapping her cheeks a little at the end. “Ahhh, okay, okay, you’re blonde so I guess I have to dumb this down for you.”

“Oh _screw_ you!”

She snapped her fingers. “Okay. You know that Italian art collector that my dad invites to art exhibitions all the time? M. Fellini.”

Chloe pouted. “Not ringing a bell.”

“He’s the one that always sounds like he has a sinus infection.”

Chloe face lit up. “Oh my god, yes!”

The joke was fresh in their minds because they both pinched their noses, lifted their chins, and said “Ah, buonasera mademoiselles, don’t you just look lovely this evening!” before collapsing into laughter when they heard how ridiculous they sounded. Honestly, that never got old. Chloé was half tempted to tell her father to send him some cold medicine for Christmas.

Alix rubbed away the tears from her eyes. “Anyway. We can agree he’s a total asshole, right?”

“He’s an old, skeezy, misogynistic snob. Asshole is too tame an insult.”

“Everyone and their mother is on the same page as you,” Alix explained. “But no one ever says that to him. People either ignore him or keep being nice to him no matter how much they wanna punch his face in.”

“I’m assuming there’s a point in you bringing him up.”

“People don’t confront him about being a jerk because he’s one of the richest and most successful art curators in Italy. Insult him and you can say goodbye to doing any kind of meaningful work with him in. Which, in the art world, is social suicide. It’s the same with you.”

Chloé scowled. “You’re comparing me to that wrinkled old sack of broken dreams?”

“It’s a perfect comparison. You got Alya suspended for taking a picture and you tried to get Marinette arrested for supposedly stealing your bracelet. Like, come _on_ dude. People are terrified of you.”

Chloé crossed her arms. “They both deserved that! Alya was invading my privacy and there’s still no proof that Marinette wasn’t involved in that whole bracelet nonsense.”

“And I’m assuming Marinette also deserved you attacking her in class today and that you sitting here is an injustice to humanity. Pretty sure Damocles and your dad are gonna totally side with you when they hear you put your hands on someone because she said something a little mean.”

Chloé looked down at her nails. “You’re being sarcastic…”

“Yeah no shit, queen bee,” Alix scolded. “Here’s a wild concept: if you want to make friends, you have to actually be nice to people. Crazy, I know! Life hack of the year!”

“I try to be nice to people!” Chloé said. “But you’ve got people like Marinette who — ”

“Nope,” Alix interrupted. “Stopping you right there. Marinette has never done anything to you. Marinette’s a freaking angel. She’s nice to everyone who’s nice to her back. The only reason you hate her is because she’s more popular than you are, so you overcompensate by trying to make yourself seem like you’re better than everyone else. Except that doesn’t make anyone want to be friends with you. That makes people wanna stay away from you.”

It was only because Alix lecturing Chloé was such a bizarre occurrence that Chloé stayed quiet and let her words sink in. She wanted to brush it off and assume that Alix was just over exaggerating the situation, but then Chloé remembered a conversation she had with Adrien during his first week of school. She warned him about how hard it was to make friends when you were as perfect, beautiful, and rich as they were because everyone was automatically jealous of your success. That was why it was so important for Chloé and Adrien to stick together because she thought he’d suffer the same fate she did. But Adrien was as quiet, polite, and soft hearted as he’d always been as a kid, and that seemed to have waltzed him straight into the hearts of everyone else in the class in a matter of days. Chloé hadn’t quite figured out how he did that or how she was supposed to follow in his footsteps.

Chloé had always been more abrasive than Adrien — louder, more sarcastic, and harder to get along with. Maybe that was the problem. Although, Alix seemed to do just fine on her end.

She flipped the questions around. “Well, how did you make friends?”

Alix shrugged. “It’s not like I tried. I don’t act different depending on the situation. I just am and people just come. Kim was my first friend because we loved competing with each other. Then Kim’s friends became my friends and it just kept going.”

“That’s what Adrien said…”

“That’s pretty much how everyone makes friends,” Alix said. “Putting people down to lift yourself up doesn’t make people starstruck by you. It just makes you seem like a bitch.”

Chloé sighed. “Daddy says that in politics, in order to win, you have to show how bad the other candidates are in order to make yourself seem better. That’s why people vote for you.”

“This isn’t politics. Making friends isn’t about crushing the competition. You just….act normal and find people that vibe with your flow. Like I said. You’re chill when you aren’t trying too hard.”

“Seriously?”

Alix grinned. “You’re surprisingly hilarious. You’re also an enabler and a bad influence, but that’s a check in my book. Gotta appreciate people who talk you into stealing a thousand euros worth of silverware just to see if you can get away with it.”

“Can’t believe you actually did that,” Chloé laughed.

“Hey, like I said. I can’t turn down a challenge.” She paused for a moment and nudged her foot against Chloé’s knee when she saw her growing quiet. “Hey. I’m not telling you this stuff to make you feel bad or anything. I’m just telling it to you straight. But I also think you can do a turn around and start being nicer to people and make more friends if you cared enough to. You’re stubborn enough to pull it off.”

Alix wasn’t the type of person to put in this much emotional labor into another person, and Chloé knew that the polite thing to do was to at least thank her. But the words felt awkward on her tongue and betrayed her inexperience, so she decided it was best to just not say anything for now. Instead, she followed up with a question that was bugging her. “Why are you telling me all of this now?”

“Dude,” Alix snickered. “You got sent to the _principal's office_. That’s like the turning point of the century. Might as well take advantage of the momentum and use it towards something productive.”

The door to M. Damocles’s office flung open before Chloé could say anything else, and the student he’d been speaking to slunk through the hall with his head down and a slip of paper crumpled up in his hands. Probably a letter for his parents to sign. “Mlle. Kubdel!” M. Damocles’s voice rang. “It’s your turn. Please come in.”

Alix winced as she collected her bag and stood on her feet. “Womp. Time to face the music. Wish me luck.”

“You know damn well you’re not going to get in any trouble.”

“Wow, fine, I’ll wish myself luck.” She held out her fist. “Hang in there, you frilly little nightmare. If you apologize and cry a lot he’ll probably go easy on you.”

Chloé gently tapped her fist against Alix’s and have her a crooked smile. “Alright.”

Alix gave her a short salute before throwing her arms wide and skipping into M. Damocles’s office as if she were greeting an old friend. Chloé shook her head fondly and tried to think of what excuse she was going to open up with before it was her turn to go inside and explain herself. If spontaneously bursting into tears was all it would take to walk away with nothing more than a stern warning, Chloé was fully prepared to polish off all those acting lessons she took when she was little.

She hummed to herself as she pulled out her phone and started typing out her script. “Turning point, huh?” she muttered. Chloé was pretty sure Alix didn’t mean for that to be a challenge, but for some reason Chloé wanted to treat it like one. Alix’s specialty was planting seeds in people’s heads and sitting back while she watched them try to pull off the impossible. Chloé could always resent the fact that Alix was trying to get in her head, but it would be much more satisfying to exceed the girl’s expectations just so she could shove it in her face.

If Chloe could convince Alix to sit still long enough to put eyeliner on her for a party, she could handle being nice for one day, right?


End file.
